Less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection, Troy Anthony Davis has been granted a 90-day stay of execution. The 38-year-old African American from Savannah, Georgia has been on death row for more than fifteen years for a murder he says he did not commit. Davis was convicted in 1991 for the killing of white police officer Mark Allen McPhail. With no physical evidence or murder weapon, the prosecution's case rested entirely on witness testimony. But seven of the nine non-police witnesses said they were coerced by police and have since recanted their testimony. Nine witnesses have also implicated another man in the murder.
Davis's execution appeared inevitable last month when the Supreme Court refused his final request for appeal. That left only the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles. Last night, it agreed to review evidence from Davis' defense team and hear the new testimony of eyewitnesses. After the ruling, Davis spoke to reporters by cell phone. He said "I'm elated. I’m blessed and thankful. I’m one step closer to my freedom.”

Groups including Amnesty International have rallied behind Davis” case. Former FBI director William Sessions submitted a written clemency appeal on Davis's behalf while the Council of Europe urged the United States not to commit what it said would be an error it would come to regret. And Georgia Congressmember John Lewis testified in person before the parole board.

Well, this case seems to be a little different with all the witnesses recanting and the involvement of state officials at the highest level supporting the stay. Usually they would be fighting it tooth and nail.

Every time I watch a news show about a trial where there is nothing but circumstantial evidence or eye witness testimony, and the defendent is found guilty, I cringe and hope to God I never get in any trouble.

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."

Execution of death row inmate had been delayed temporarily as country's top judges considered case

Troy Davis. The US supreme court has refused to stop his execution. Photograph: AP

The US Supreme Court has rejected a last-ditch request to halt the execution of Troy Davis, the Georgia death row inmate convicted of murdering a police officer.
The nation's highest court refused to stay the execution of Davis, who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7pm EDT (11pm GMT) at a prison in Jackson, Georgia.
It took the court more than four hours to issue its one-sentence order, an unusually long time in such cases. The delay gave rise to hopes that the judges would agree to a stay.
Brian Kammer, a lawyer for Davis, said in seeking a stay from the supreme court that newly available evidence revealed false, misleading and inaccurate information was presented at the trial, "rendering the convictions and death sentence fundamentally unreliable."
As the first news of a delay came in at the Jackson prison that houses death row, a huge cheer erupted from a crowd of more than 500 protesters that had amassed on the other side of the road.

Davis's supporters kissed each other and threw placards which read "Not in my name" into the air.
But the jubilation was short-lived. Talk of a reprieve from the US supreme court quickly gave way to rumours of a stay, and finally the realisation that the court had only ordered a temporary delay as it considered the matter. The mood then grew more sombre as the waiting game that has now been going on for years with Davis resumed.
Earlier on Wednesday, Georgia's supreme court had rejected a last-ditch appeal by Davis's lawyers over the 1989 murder of off-duty policeman Mark MacPhail, for which Davis had been convicted despite overwhelming evidence that the conviction is unreliable.
A Butts county superior court judge had also declined to stop the execution.
Davis's attorneys had filed an appeal challenging ballistics evidence linking Davis to the crime, and eyewitness testimony identifying Davis as the killer.
The White House declined to comment on the case, saying: "It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases."
At the maximum security prison in Jackson where the execution was scheduled to take place, busloads of Troy Davis supporters from his home town of Savannah came in to register their anger and despair at what they all agree is the planned judicial killing of an innocent man.

Edward DuBose, a leader of the Georgia branch of the NAACP, said it was not an execution, but a "murder".
The protest heard from Martina Correia, Davis's eldest sister, who delivered a statement from about 20 family members gathered around her. She was heavily critical of what she described as the defiance of the state of Georgia and its inability to admit that it had made a mistake.
She pointed out that the state's parole board had vowed in 2007 that no execution would take place if there was any doubt. "Every year there is more and more doubt yet still the state pushes for an execution," she said.
Correia, who has cancer, struggled to her feet in honour of her brother, just a few hours from his probable death. But she exhorted people not to give up.
"if you can get millions of people to stand up against this you can end the death penalty. We shouldn't have to live in a state that executes people when there's doubt."
DuBose gave an account of a 30-minute conversation he had with Davis on death row on Tuesday night. "Troy wanted me to let you know – keep the faith. The fight is bigger than him."
DuBose said that whether the execution went ahead or not, the fight would continue. He said Davis wants his case to set an example "that the death penalty in this country needs to end. They call it execution; we call it murder."
Hundreds of people gathered outside the prison, many wearing T-shirts that said: "I am Troy Davis". The activist Al Sharpton said: "What is facing execution tonight is not just the body of Troy Davis, but the spirit of due justice in the state of Georgia."
Larry Cox, the executive director of Amnesty in the US, which has led the international campaign for clemency, said demonstrations were happening outside US embassies in France, Mali, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany and the UK.
"We will not stop fighting until we live in a world where no state thinks it can kill innocent people."

After winning three delays since 2007, Davis lost an appeal for clemency this week when the Georgia pardons board denied his request, despite serious doubts about his guilt.
Some witnesses who testified against Davis at trial later recanted, and others who did not testify came forward to say another man did it. But a federal judge dismissed those accounts as "largely smoke and mirrors" after a hearing Davis was granted last year to argue for a new trial, which he did not win.
Davis refused a last meal. He planned to spend his final hours meeting with friends, family and supporters.
Davis has received support from hundreds of thousands of people, including a former FBI director, former president Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI.
Parliamentarians and government ministers from the Council of Europe, the EU's human rights watchdog, had earlier called for Davis's sentence to be commuted.
Renate Wohlwend of the council's parliamentary assembly said: "To carry out this irrevocable act now would be a terrible mistake, which could lead to a tragic injustice".
The US supreme court gave him an unusual opportunity to prove his innocence last year, but his attorneys failed to convince a judge he did not do it.
State and federal courts have repeatedly upheld his conviction.

Prosecutors say they have no doubt they charged the right person, and MacPhail's family lobbied the pardons board Monday to reject Davis's clemency appeal. The board refused to stop the execution a day later.
"He has had ample time to prove his innocence," said MacPhail's widow, Joan MacPhail-Harris. "And he is not innocent."
Spencer Lawton, the district attorney who secured Davis's conviction in 1991, said he was embarrassed for the judicial system that the execution has taken so long.
"What we have had is a manufactured appearance of doubt which has taken on the quality of legitimate doubt itself. And all of it is exquisitely unfair," said Lawton, who retired as Chatham County's head prosecutor in 2008.
"The good news is we live in a civilized society where questions like this are decided based on fact in open and transparent courts of law, and not on street corners."
Davis supporters pushed the pardons board to reconsider his case.
They also asked Savannah prosecutors to block the execution, although Chatham County district attorney Larry Chisolm said in a statement he was powerless to withdraw an execution order for Davis issued by a state superior court judge.
"We appreciate the outpouring of interest in this case; however, this matter is beyond our control," Chisolm said.

On my Twitter this morning: If you'd rather kill someone than admit you're wrong, you're probably a psychopath. Or the state of Georgia.

Vouch!
But in Texas, we put one of those motherfuckers to death that was involved in the dragging death of a black man (Mr. Byrd). I'm all for them putting the other two to death too. Right up until the end, that sonofabitch said that he "would do it all again". No apologies, no nothing, a racist asshole to the bitter, bitter end.

Vouch!
But in Texas, we put one of those motherfuckers to death that was involved in the dragging death of a black man (Mr. Byrd). I'm all for them putting the other two to death too. Right up until the end, that sonofabitch said that he "would do it all again". No apologies, no nothing, a racist asshole to the bitter, bitter end.

I remember being horrified at that crime in Texas. (The dragging, not the execution.)

Vouch!
But in Texas, we put one of those motherfuckers to death that was involved in the dragging death of a black man (Mr. Byrd). I'm all for them putting the other two to death too. Right up until the end, that sonofabitch said that he "would do it all again". No apologies, no nothing, a racist asshole to the bitter, bitter end.

Don't know if you saw it, Mel, but the little b*stard has also single handedly ended last meal requests for death row inmates in Texas.

Apparently what happened was he ordered an ENORMOUS meal:

Two chicken fried steaks, a triple-meat bacon cheeseburger, fried okra, a pound of barbecue, three fajitas, a meat lover's pizza, a pint of ice cream and a slab of peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

And then he didn't eat any of it. As a result, they are ending last meal requests in Texas.

I was brought up in a family of death penalty opponents. As an adult, I'm still against it but I am somewhat conflicted. It is hard for me to imagine feeling like eating before being put to death anyway. And the idea of giving someone their last meal, with everything they ask for, and then killing them, is kind of disgusting.

I was brought up in a family of death penalty opponents. As an adult, I'm still against it but I am somewhat conflicted. It is hard for me to imagine feeling like eating before being put to death anyway. And the idea of giving someone their last meal, with everything they ask for, and then killing them, is kind of disgusting.

I know that I come across frequently as a blood-thirsty, atavistic proponent of the death penalty, but I'm really only in favor of it for heinous crimes (terrorists, serial killers, mass murderers, child murderers). Not for a Troy Davis, even if he were guilty.

Last night, I had the misfortune of reading about a 19-year-old guy who raped the one-year-old boy he was babysitting. The little boy had to have a colostomy because of the injury to his body. I would love to have this deviant dropped into a live volcano....

I know that I come across frequently as a blood-thirsty, atavistic proponent of the death penalty, but I'm really only in favor of it for heinous crimes (terrorists, serial killers, mass murderers, child murderers). Not for a Troy Davis, even if he were guilty.

Last night, I had the misfortune of reading about a 19-year-old guy who raped the one-year-old boy he was babysitting. The little boy had to have a colostomy because of the injury to his body. I would love to have this deviant dropped into a live volcano....

Well, that's the problem I have, too, because in my gut I would just like to see the really bad people die. I also realize it's kind of hypocritical of me to oppose the death penalty but then say it's OK if someone gets offed in prison because they've got it coming.

For crimes committed against children, I favor letting the parents implement the death sentence themselves against the perpetrator. So, yeah, I guess you could say I am very conflicted.